Hear me out on this

[dyresand]

-only until we got up there and realized that we had what amounted to a practically infinite amount of raw material work with.

The problem is getting to it in the first place. If all the nations of the world contributed to a common effort to build a space-based infrastructure, we could do it. It's just an awfully expensive proposition for anyone going at it alone. And then there is the total lack of vision of the people who control the money.

Under extreme circumstances we would do it, and not look at the money but the bigger picture of yeah were going to die if we don't get into space.
But making a space colony in general you are right.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

This is more of a highly educated conclusion. Saying that we are the only living beings out there would be some what ignorant. 
We have detected earth like planets we could colonize but even still the problem arises they are so far away we can see the planet
but the light coming back to us is really old. So there comes to problem what if we get there and remember the light is really old mind you
and there is some type of being intelligent beings or wild life. That would be interesting considering what if they are just like us.
They are on the other side scoping our planet out like hey there is a planet we could settle down on since there is no life on there.

Humans are unique to Earth.  They don't exist elsewhere.  Life forms on other planets are unique to each specific planet.  There are no Earth-like planets within 60 light years or so of us.  It took our probe 9 and a half years to reach Pluto so we won't be going out of the neighborhood anytime soon.  And since humans have only been intelligent less than 75 years chances are we will die out before we will build a useful space ship.

[KUSA]

Humans are unique to Earth.  They don't exist elsewhere.  Life forms on other planets are unique to each specific planet.

No no no. There are humans all over the universe. They might have cranial ridges, pointy ears, or some other minor difference but they are there.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Humans are unique to Earth.  They don't exist elsewhere.  Life forms on other planets are unique to each specific planet.

No no no. There are humans all over the universe. They might have cranial ridges, pointy ears, or some other minor difference but they are there.

You've been watching too many sci-fi movies.

[ignoramus]

Who? ,Me?
Live long and prosper.

[Gawdzilla]

I'd like to point out that Fermi was not an astronomer. His paradox isn't paradoxical.

[ignoramus]

That statement sounds like a paradox.

[Gawdzilla]

I'd like to point out that Fermi was not an astronomer. His paradox isn't paradoxical.

That statement sounds like a paradox.

It wasn't a paradox, it was a bald assertion that aliens wouldn't exist unless they were here already. This eliminates aliens who lived long before us and those too far away to even know we are here.

[Spooky]

I believe humans will eventually colonize space. I'll be dead before that happens, but hey, hopefully we do a better job in the future of learning from our past.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

I believe humans will eventually colonize space.  I'll be dead before that happens, but hey, hopefully we do a better job in the future of learning from our past.  

It'll never happen because the Repubs won't pay the necessary taxes to make it happen.